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If you’re curious why many House Republicans are on board with an unhinged plan to threaten a government shutdown or default over demands to “defund” Obamacare, you should follow the money. That’s what the New York Times editorial board argued in a compelling op-ed Tuesday.

Far-right groups such as the Club for Growth are striking out at Republicans who refuse to take this reckless stance, wielding their considerable funds to “inflict political pain” on those who do not share their extremist position. And they are titillating their Tea Party supporters with political fantasies in order to get them to send in even more money, so they can ramp up their attack on Republicans who don’t toe the line. In “The Money Behind the Shutdown Crisis,” the editorial board wrote:

These groups, all financed with secret and unlimited money, feed on chaos and would like nothing better than to claim credit for pushing Washington into another crisis. Winning an ideological victory is far more important to them than the severe economic effects of a shutdown or, worse, a default, which could shatter the credit markets.

[…] Brian Walsh, a longtime Republican operative, recently noted in U.S. News and World Report that the right is now spending more money attacking Republicans than the Democrats are. “Money begets TV ads, which begets even more money for these groups’ personal coffers,” he wrote. “Pointing fingers and attacking Republicans is apparently a very profitable fund-raising business.”

And as more money pours into these shadowy groups, their influence – and thus their potential for inflicting further damage on our democracy – grows. With fewer effective campaign finance regulations left standing in the post-Citizens United landscape, there is little that can stop these groups from using their money to bully elected officials.

But the functioning of our government is not a game. And though for these fringe groups making an ideological point may seem more important than keeping our government from shutting down or defaulting, Americans are tired of having our basic economic security called into question over political posturing.

As the Times editorial board put it:

It may be good for their bank accounts, but the combination of unlimited money and rigid ideology is proving toxic for the most basic functioning of government.

Center for Military Readiness head Elaine Donnelly appeared on Sandy Rios In The Morning today to onceagain warn of the perils of allowing women in combat. She told the American Family Association radio host that the Obama administration’s plan to open combat roles to women service members is “like saying let’s take those cheerleaders and put them into the frontlines of the NFL and football games.”

Rios said that the problem all started with the “feminist influence” found in movies that made women think that they “can do it all.”

“We are watching movies, almost every action movie has a chick hero and she’s stronger than the men, and she’s able to kick and to move and to kill as lethally as they are,” Rios added. “It started maybe with Spider-Woman, I don’t know.”

She went on to recount her time in Israel talking to the country’s female soldiers who “were very proud of what they were able to do” on the frontlines.

Rios sidestepped the issue on whether Israel’s policy towards women in the military harmed its country’s security, unlike her AFA colleague Bryan Fischer who tackled it by falsely claiming that Israel bans women in combat.

Donnelly: In that environment, direct ground combat, women are at a severe disadvantage. They do not have an equal opportunity to survive or help fellow soldiers survive. To force women into that environment it’s like saying let’s take those cheerleaders and put them into the frontlines of the NFL and football games. Well we don’t even do that with the officials in the football games. To do that would be unfair, injuries would skyrocket and it certainly wouldn’t help that team win any games, and that’s non-lethal combat. So if we’re not going to do it in non-lethal combat in the NFL, why are we planning on doing this in lethal combat where national security is at risk?

Rios: You and I both know that our daughters and many women listening to you and me, women our age too, are products of feminist influence even if they don’t consider themselves a feminist. We are watching movies, almost every action movie has a chick hero and she’s stronger than the men, and she’s able to kick and to move and to kill as lethally as they are, with Catherine Zeta Jones and think of all the women who have played these roles. It started maybe with Spider-Woman, I don’t know. It’s like ‘women power’ and ‘we can do this.’ In fact I just was in Israel interviewing some of the females in the Israeli military and they were talking about their frontline experience and they were very proud of what they were able to do, so there’s this mood, this feeling, that women can do it all.

Pat Robertson and his Christian Broadcasting Network filed a report today that falsely claimed that having a “biblical view” on sexuality has been “criminalized” in San Antonio, Texas. Robertson said San Antonio “has gone off the rails” by adopting a non-discrimination ordinance [PDF] which includes protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, and claimed that the new law would lead to Christians being thrown in prison: “This means that if you speak out about your deeply held religious beliefs they will put you in jail or brand you some kind of a class 3 felon.”

“This whole thing is outrageous and that city council should be replaced,” Robertson charged.

The segment quoted Christian Right activists arguing that gay people are seeking “special rights” while taking away the rights to religious freedom and speech of Christians. CBN reporter Heather Sells even said the new policy “criminalizes those with a biblical view of sexuality.”

Generation Joshua is the youth branch of the HSLDA, which sends homeschoolers to work on “races across the country, phone-banking, literature dropping and campaigning on behalf of conservative candidates” who oppose abortion rights and gay equality. “Many battles have been won on the homeschooling front, but there are many battles left to fight because the giants of abortion, homosexuality, and moral relativism remain in our land.”

Cuccinelli was the keynote speaker at the Generation Joshua’s first annual Future of America Banquet, and now the right-wing organization is returning the favor.

Watchdog.org reports that Generation Joshua is hoping to send around 200 students “to work with the Cuccinelli campaign in two weeks” as part of “Operation: Shock and Awe,” which is complete with this fantastic video:

Last December, Farris gained publicity for his drive to make sure that no gay students are attending Patrick Henry College. A Patrick Henry professor during the college's annual “Faith and Reason” lecture criticized the government for prosecuting rape, sexual harassment, child abuse and domestic violence cases.

Cuccinelli delivered the 2012 commencement address at Patrick Henry College, where he attacked President Obama for thinking he knows “better than God” on the issue of same-sex marriage and called on graduates to engage in the fight “against the tide of political correctness, the intelligentsia and the media.”

Yesterday afternoon, the Texas State Board of Education held its first hearing on whether to require new high school biology textbooks to teach creationism alongside evolution. One member of the panel appointed by the Texas Education Agency to review potential textbooks –few of whom were actual biologists-- concluded by recommending that high school biology texts be rooted in “bibilical principles.”

Yesterday, People For the American Way sent a letter to the board urging them to reject attempts to inject creationism into science classes. PFAW also joined with the Texas Freedom Network and other groups to deliver 300,000 petitions urging the board to stand up for science.

While most of those who showed up to testify at the hearing supported teaching evolution– our friends at TFN documented many of these on their great live blog of the proceedings – there were some notable exceptions.

One of the first people to speak was Don McLeroy, a former chairman of the State Board of Education who was prominently featured in the documentary The Revisionaries. While most people were allowed just two minutes to speak, the board let McLeroy go on for over ten minutes in a bizarre speech in which he argued that the current textbooks teaching evolution should be approved because their evidence is so “weak” that children will realize that the theory of evolution is just “words” and a “just so story," and thereby strikes a "final blow" to the theory.

Scott Lively, the pastor behind anti-gay laws from Uganda to Russia, appeared on TruNews yesterday to reveal to host Rick Wiles the identity of the Antichrist: President Obama. While he refused to mention Obama by name, he said that the Antichrist is the person “heading the largest superpower of the world today.” Lively explained that the Antichrist (read: Obama) will cancel all of the world’s debts in 2015, end the Mideast conflict with a peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians and introduce a one-world economic system and secular humanist religion.

Lively: Regional war breaks out and at the same time, because of that, the global economy collapses, crashes. That begins the serious pain for the entire world that the globalists actually want to prepare them for the global, one-world system. They already have the economic system to bring in; just nobody is ready to accept it. So at the right time, after there’s been enough pain, what happens is the Antichrist—I won’t name any names here but he is heading the largest superpower of the world today—steps in at the right time and does three things. He declares a global jubilee in which all the debts of the world are eliminated, this is after there’s been massive numbers of people who have died—

Wiles: Scott, I told people, I told our audience years ago, I’m going to say 2008, I said on this program this global financial crisis will be so bad that at some point in the future a world leader will say the only solution is biblical, we will have to cancel all the debts and we are going to have a global jubilee.

Lively: Amen. And we just happen to have one coming up, September 23, 2015.

Wiles: And the politician who does it is going to be hailed as the greatest man on the planet.

Lively: The hero of the world, right? This is the guy that also is going to be able to do what no one else in the history of the Middle East conflict could do. He’s going to have brought a peace treaty between the Palestinians and the Israelis; the Palestinians get their two-state solution and the Israelis get the permission to build on the Temple Mount. And who is the hero? It’s the guy that I’m not going to mention his name.

Wiles: And a lot of Christians when they see the Temple going up are going to hyperventilate, thinking this is a great thing and they have no idea that Antichrist is coming.

Lively: Only because it’s a symbol of what’s coming. Here’s the one other part that’s been missing, you’ve alluded to it and we’re very close on this that at the same time he introduces the new global system but here’s the other missing component. What’s the religion of the Antichrist? The religion of the Antichrist is secular humanism.

As Lively explained, the imminent apocalypse is the result of homosexuality, which he said is “at the heart of the Antichrist kingdom” (along with Islam). He repeated his claim that homosexuality caused Noah’s Flood and the destruction of Sodom, arguing that gay rights is the issue that “portends the End Times” and is backed by the Devil.

What is the issue that God is using to divide the sheep and the goats right now? It’s not whether Jesus Christ is Lord. It’s where do you stand on homosexuality? You know why? He gave us the warnings about that. From Genesis to Revelation, he has given us the advance notice that this issue portends the End Times and that when you see these things happen you’ll know that is the context that you are in. That’s the issue that is dividing the church right down the middle, of all the issue that God could’ve chosen. And the people who are going to the world’s side and the Devil’s side on that question are completely blind to its importance as a biblical topic; they think it is unimportant, that God doesn’t care about that when He gave us the only sin associated with the destruction of cities with fire and brimstone, the only sin associated with a reprobate mind in Romans 1, the thing that the rabbis said was the last straw before God brought the Flood, the issue that seems to be the heart of the Antichrist kingdom in Revelation 11 when it says that the two witnesses are struck down in the city that is mystically called Sodom and Egypt: homosexuality and Islam.

Lively argued that only Vladimir Putin is the world’s last hope, and called for other nations to follow in his footsteps in implementing stringently anti-gay laws.

We don’t want to gloss over the problems that we have with Mr. Putin but by the same token he’s the only world leader capable of standing up to the West and he is championing the traditional marriage and Christian values regarding the central moral issue of our time that no one else has the capability to do what he’s doing. Really there’s a chance here for him to inspire all the morally conservative countries of the law to adopt a similar law that he just adopted, his country just adopted and really have a chance maybe to roll some of this terrible agenda back.

Dannenfelser and FRC Action hope that Cuccinelli will continue his efforts to close the majority of the state’s abortion clinics. As the Washington Post editorial board noted yesterday, “If Mr. Cuccinelli is elected governor in November, most of the remaining 18 clinics are likely to shut their doors within months.”

The upcoming fundraiser with two of the country’s foremost social conservative groups shows that as much as Cuccinelli would like Virginia voters to forget about his extreme stances, he is, first and foremost, a Religious Right ideologue.

WASHINGTON – Today, People For the American Way President Michael Keegan sent a letter to Texas State Board of Education members urging them to reject attempts to pressure textbook companies to include the doctrine of creationism in public high school biology textbooks.

People For the American Way also joined with the Texas Freedom Network, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, and CREDO Action in delivering nearly 300,000 petitions to the Board of Education before at its hearing on new textbooks today.

“Teaching creationism in public schools isn’t just unconstitutional: It also cheats Texas kids of the science education they need to compete in the world economy,” Keegan said. “The job of the Texas State Board of Education is to ensure that Texas students receive the best education possible, not to inject politics and religious doctrine into the classroom.”

As the Texas Freedom Network and People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch have reported, members of the review panel appointed by the Texas Education Agency to review high school biology textbooks have urged the Board of Education to pressure textbook companies to include “creation science based on biblical principles” in science books. In 1987, the Supreme Court found that requiring the teaching of creationism in public school science classes is unconstitutional.

The full text of People For the American Way’s letter is below:

State Board of Education
1701 N. Congress Avenue
Austin, Texas, 78701

September 17, 2013

Dear Members of the Texas State Board of Education:

On behalf of People For the American Way’s 76,590 Texas members and activists, we urge you to reject attempts to pressure textbook companies to include religiously based and politically biased information in high school biology textbooks.

Recent reports by the Texas Freedom Network indicate that the majority of panelists the Texas Education Agency chose to review high school biology texts for the state do not possess post-secondary education in biological science and that many do not have any expertise in biology at all. These panelists, instead of preparing Texas students to compete in the biological sciences, have instead demanded that biology textbooks used in public schools incorporate “biblical principles” and undermine the foundational theory of evolution.

These demands run counter to the Supreme Court’s 1987 decision in Edwards v. Aguillard, which found that requirements that public schools teach creationism in science classes present a clear violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. These efforts also undermine the ability of Texas public schools to prepare students to compete in the field of biological sciences.

Our public schools must be dedicated to providing a world-class education and equal opportunity to all children, regardless of their religious backgrounds.

We urge you to reject attempts to insert political bias and religious teachings into biology textbooks used in public schools. In addition, we hope that future textbook reviews will be conducted by those with expertise in the relevant fields.

Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity and Mike Huckabee seem to have no problem with hosting conservative columnist and author Erik Rush, who has urged the US to kill all Muslims and accused President Obama of being a serial killer. Rush reacted to the Navy Yard shooting yesterday by tweeting that the rampage was “part political diversion, part gun-grabbing theater. NOT random. NOT a lone psycho.”

“If you think the #dcnavyyardshooting is random or just an irate doofus, you’re kidding yourself,” Rush also tweeted.

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality joined Mission America’s Linda Harvey over the weekend to discuss how groups like GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network) are attempting to use schools to make kids gay and transgender, which they suggested would increase the rate of HIV.

Responding to GLSEN’s Transgender Students Rights initiative, Harvey asked: “Why in the world are we doing this to kids? You know, a self-destructive society would do these kinds of things, wouldn’t they? And look at us.”

“Yes. A healthy society discriminates against perverse and dangerous and unhealthy behaviors such as homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism,” LaBarbera said. “That’s what a healthy society does.”

Erick Stakelbeck, the former sports reporter who fashions himself to be an expert on terrorism, regularly argues that progressives and Islamic extremists are working together to establish some sort of communist, Islamic state. While appearing on It’s Supernatural!, host Sid Roth said he couldn’t understand his assertion since the “political left is not going to be aligned with someone who wants to kill homosexuals.”

But as the Christian Broadcasting Network reporter explained, even though “the left would be the first ones with their heads on the chopping block if Islamic Sharia law came into power,” both liberals and radical Islamists “hate traditional America” and “hate the name of Yeshua (Jesus) so much that they will work together, at least in the short term, to chip away at traditional America and traditional western civilization.”

Concerned Women for America’s Joseph Rossell warns in a blog post last week that environmental protection efforts represent “an incredibly evil set of values,” if not “the most dangerous agenda on earth.”

Quoting Margaret Sanger and Paul Ehrlich’s warnings about overpopulation, Rossell writes that environmentalists back a “vile” and “highly dangerous ideology” that “may very well be the most anti-human, anti-life agenda on the planet.”

What do you think of when you hear the term “environmentalism”? For most people, the word probably brings to mind images of harmless hippies out to curb pollution and encourage recycling.

But the reality is much more sinister. What most people don’t realize is that environmentalism may very well be the most anti-human, anti-life agenda on the planet. Humans are seen as a blight on the world, population levels are considered far too high, and it is believed necessary to dramatically reduce the number of people globally through brutal methods (including sterilization and abortion).

…

Environmentalism is not benign; it is a highly dangerous ideology. The individuals quoted above are far from obscure within the movement; they are rather mainstream environmentalists. Their vile beliefs are not simply being repeated in ivory towers, but are increasingly infiltrating public policy through a burgeoning regulatory system. These views are also gaining ground in American school systems, thanks in part to initiatives like Common Core, which promotes texts involving these themes.

Christ warns His followers, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). Environmentalism is similarly deceptive, requiring us to employ spiritual discernment. Although it may seem outwardly attractive, underneath environmentalism’s glistening veneer of social justice is actually an incredibly evil set of values.

In 2010, Wendy Wright, then the president of CWA, was featured alongside other Religious Right figures in a “documentary” about how environmental movement is a “Green Dragon” based on myths and falsehoods.

“Conservatism is too cerebral for many Americans,” writes Rachel Alexander at the Christian Post. She claims that Republicans continue to lose elections “because people are lazy” and simply not smart enough to understand why Democrats are wrong on the issues.

“While Americans deep down prefer shows like Duck Dynasty, they're allowing the left to win on social issues,” Alexander said. “Republicans need to quit lamenting over the backwards fact that the most intelligent party is not the most successful.”

One way to change to “turn the tide” and improve the GOP’s image as a “cold and heartless” party, she writes, is to shame women who seek an abortion: “Portray the woman who wants to abort her baby as cruel and selfish, and showcase those children who grew up with permanent injuries as a result of an attempted, botched abortion. These kinds of portrayals must be done frequently and everywhere.”

Americans appear to have begun entering a more conservative phase, reflected in part by the popularity of the family-oriented, God-loving TV show Duck Dynasty. Although it is not a big expensive production, just a reality show, it has become the second most popular show on cable TV.

Yet this isn't translating into changes in Americans' politics or their government. Americans are still voting for Democrats, accepting socially liberal positions and expanding government. The reason is simple. Liberalism self-perpetuates itself if left unchecked because people are lazy. This is due to the nature of government. It is difficult to feel the effects of incrementally raising taxes and increasing spending across the board.

…

The left is also winning the culture war. While Americans deep down prefer shows like Duck Dynasty, they're allowing the left to win on social issues. The left has accomplished this by portraying Republicans as cold and heartless, using emotional arguments to sway the public. Republicans can turn this around by doing the exact same thing back to the left. Portray the woman who wants to abort her baby as cruel and selfish, and showcase those children who grew up with permanent injuries as a result of an attempted, botched abortion. These kinds of portrayals must be done frequently and everywhere. It must become common knowledge that the left has cruel and selfish policies that injure people, in order to turn the tide.

Conservatism is too cerebral for many Americans. Consequently, the right has to try twice as hard as the left to gain support for its policies. This means working smarter too, by using methods that are effective like emotional arguments. Although it may feel foreign to most on the right to use an emotional argument about something that is not terribly worthy of emotion, to continue down the same old path that no longer works is slowly making the Republican Party a minority. Republicans need to quit lamenting over the backwards fact that the most intelligent party is not the most successful.

Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman reiterated his call today for an anti-Obamarebellion and Egyptian-style coup, writing in Renew America that Americans should gather en masse in Washington D.C. to remove President Obama from office. Klayman maintains that since neither Congress nor the courts will remove Obama, a popular uprising is needed “to cleanse the nation of the half-Muslim, anti-white, socialist fraud in the White House before the nation goes under for the final count.”

“If the Egyptians can do this with regard to another radical Muslim, former president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, then can't we Americans do it with Obama?” Klayman asks, calling for conservatives working with his new group, Freedom Watch, to organize an “Occupy Washington” movement in which millions of people will “stand in front of the White House and other national treasures and demand that Barack Hussein Obama leave.”

“And, when we do converge on and ‘Occupy Washington’ in the millions on a date to be announced for the week before Thanksgiving, the people may think about chanting: ‘Mr. President (to use the term loosely), put the Quran down, get up off your knees and come out with your hands up!’”

“[Obama] will finally know that his time has come to leave his perverted, Islamic concept of Mecca, our nation's hallowed capital,” Klayman concludes. “I do not advocate violence, but it is time we show Obama that we mean business. He would be well advised to ride off into his Islamic sunset, link up with 72 virgins and party on at his expense – not ours!”

On Sept. 11, 2013, a dangerous and viral strain of Muslims invaded Washington, D.C., to march and declare victory over Christians and Jews and to otherwise thumb their noses at everyone who does not believe in allah. While only 30 or so had the "courage" to actually appear on the streets of D.C., having been surrounded by a horde of "Rolling Thunder" Harley Davidson motorcycle riders, and despite the fact that the Muslims secured a permit and the motorcyclists were denied one by Barack Hussein Obama's National Park Service, let us take a lesson from our Islamic "friends." It is time that we Christians, Jews, people of faith and all true patriots say enough is enough and ourselves, in a very real way, "Occupy Washington" to cleanse the nation of the half-Muslim, anti-white, socialist fraud in the White House before the nation goes under for the final count.

Having done little to nothing about the growing list of "phony" Obama scandals, ranging from Benghazi-gate, to IRS-gate, to Navy SEAL Team VI-gate, to Fast and Furious-gate, to NSA-gate, to name just a few, it is clear that our elected representatives do not have the will or courage to remove the mullah-in-chief from office.

Over the last five years, as we stand on the precipice of calamity by provoking a regional and potential global war with Obama's pro-Islamic desire to intervene to "save" his radical Muslim al-Qaida "freedom fighters" by bombing Syria, it is clear that the time to act is now. Impeachment is not an option, as Republicans, many of whom support Obama in this folly, are content to let this incompetent evil fraud continue in office until at least the run-up to the 2014 congressional elections. This was the same game Republicans played with previous Democratic presidential criminals Bill and Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2000 elections. Not wanting to remove Bill Clinton from office, lest Vice President Al Gore become an incumbent president with all the advantages of potential re-election, Republicans bailed out and refused to both impeach and convict "Slick Willy" of the scandals that really mattered: China-gate, File-gate and Travel-gate. So if the past is a prologue, which it is today even more than it was back in the late 1990s, the Grand Old Party is even more of a neutered, impotent elephant now.

Our court system is also not ready, willing or, practically speaking, able to get the job done. Save for federal judges like Royce Lamberth who did so much during the Clinton years to hold them accountable to the rule of law, there is no one on the bench who will stand up to the president. Just look at the judges, state and federal, who have had the chance to effectively remove Obama over his lack of eligibility to be president, as he is not a natural born citizen. From Florida, to Alabama, to Georgia, to California, lower court judges have fudged the law to squirm out of having to actually rule on not only his "phony" birth certificate but also his lack of having two American-born citizen parents as required by our Constitution. While many of these lower court rulings are on appeal, do not hold your breath that the higher courts will have the courage to do what needs to be done. That is the reason for Freedom Watch's citizens' grand juries, which are indicting and trying political felons like Obama as we speak. In this regard, a conviction is near in the case of the Obama for eligibility fraud.

Once convicted, We the People will have the right to enforce this conviction and demand that Obama surrender himself to the people's system of justice for incarceration. Will he do so voluntarily? Obviously not! His arrogance and disrespect for American law – just look at how his attorney general has flouted it – and his apparent allegiance to Shariah law make this more than unlikely, to put it mildly.

I therefore call upon all American patriots, once we obtain this conviction, which we will shortly, to converge on Washington. Millions should stand in front of the White House and other national treasures and demand that Barack Hussein Obama leave. If the Egyptians can do this with regard to another radical Muslim, former president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, then can't we Americans do it with Obama?

And, when we do converge on and "Occupy Washington" in the millions on a date to be announced for the week before Thanksgiving, the people may think about chanting: "Mr. President (to use the term loosely), put the Quran down, get up off your knees and come out with your hands up!"

The power of the people will then be heard without firing one proverbial shot. This fraudster, who stole the presidency and has done so much harm, will finally know that his time has come to leave his perverted, Islamic concept of Mecca, our nation's hallowed capital.

I do not advocate violence, but it is time we show Obama that we mean business. He would be well advised to ride off into his Islamic sunset, link up with 72 virgins and party on at his expense – not ours!

Tony Perkins led the fight against repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and runs an organization whose spokesman called on the government to “export” gay people, so it is only natural that now Perkins is fashioning himself as a foe of discrimination…against straight service members.

He is upset that the military — which recognizes same-sex marriages — is allowing gays and lesbians in the military who are stationed in states that ban same-sex marriage to travel to states with marriage equality laws to attain a marriage license:

The new policy, which will take effect by Sept. 3, allows gay and lesbian service members in the U.S. as many as seven days of extra leave to get married, as long as they are stationed more than 100 miles from a state where same-sex marriages are legal or from the District of Columbia, where the marriages are also performed.

Military personnel who are overseas will get as many as 10 days to travel back to the U.S. to get married.

Today on his radio commentary, Perkins said the military has lost “their senses” with its “discriminatory” policies:

For our troops, marriage is becoming the biggest battlefield. Hello, I'm Tony Perkins with the Family Research Council in Washington. Thanks to the Pentagon, taxpayers are giving gay service members quite a wedding gift. According to the Defense Department, homosexual troops are getting some extra incentives to get hitched--including 10 days of bonus leave. The AP says gay and lesbian military members will get as many as two weeks of extra vacation time to travel to states that allow same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, the Defense Department says it "remains committed to ensuring that all men and women who service in the U.S. military... are treated fairly." If that were true, heterosexual couples would be getting the same benefits. See, this special, taxpayer-funded leave isn't just expensive--it's discriminatory. According to the Pentagon, heterosexual couples aren't eligible. How's that for equality? The administration says this perk "level[s] the playing field between opposite-sex and same-sex couples." But when it comes to extra vacation days, the only thing the military is taking leave of is their senses!

A mandatory lecture given to the students of the Christian conservative Patrick Henry College on Friday offered apologies for rape, domestic violence and child abuse, and blamed American mass incarceration on feminists’ insistance on prosecuting sexual violence.

Though they claim to advance rights, or equality, or justice – values that in their place may be seductively legitimate – the real aim is power – or as currently phrased, “empowerment.” In comparison with this shared common goal, differences in contentare secondary. This is why alliances are readily formed between seemingly incompatible agendas: Hitler and Stalin, or Islamists and feminists. “Power is the alpha and the omega of contemporary Communism,” wrote Milovan Djilas during the repression of the 1950s.“Ideas, philosophical principles, and moral considerations…– all can be changed and sacrificed. But not power.

Feminists, he argues, have used the sexual revolution to impose “state repression” and “transformed our government into a matriarchal leviathan” by criminalizing rape, domestic violence and child abuse. Baskerville cites the work of University of Pennsylvania professor Marie Gottschalk to claim that the criminalization of sexual violence has led to the United States’ historic levels of mass incarceration. Gottschalk argued that women’s groups’ working with law and order groups in the 1960s and ‘70s “contributed to a more punitive climate,” not that the criminalization of sexual violence led to mass incarceration. But no matter— in the prosecution of rape and domestic violence, Baskerville sees “our own homegrown version of Stalinism”:

What Gottschalk has stumbled upon is our own homegrown version of Stalinism: the process by which triumphant radicals first challenge and then commandeer both traditional values and the instruments of state repression for their own purposes as they trade ideological purity for power.

Since the inception of their Revolution – and well beneath the media radar screen – militants have been creating a panoply of new crimes and expanded redefinitions of existing crimes – all involving sexual relations. While it is very likely that the Sexual Revolution has also increased incidents of real sex crimes, the new gender crimes are different: They play on the fear of sex crimes, but they redefine these politically to include not simply acts but heterodox political beliefs. The reality of the witch hunts thus bears no necessary relation to what is suggested by the inflammatory language and jargon:

“rape” that includes consensual relations and in most instances is no more than that;

domestic “violence” that involves no violence or any physical contact or threat of it;

sexual “harassment” that can mean anything from simple flirtation to unauthorized opinions about morality or politics;

“child abuse” that is routine parental discipline, or homeschooling, or concocted altogether to win advantage in divorce court;

“bullying” that involves criticism of the homosexual agenda or other differences of belief and opinion;

“stalking” that is forcibly divorced fathers trying to see their own children;

and much more.

These new gender crimes have been created not despite the new sexual freedom but as the inseparable corollary to it. The new crimes operate in concert with the new freedoms and smoothly combine expanded sexual license with diminished civic freedom, and indeed, state repression.

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The crime usually begins as some new sexual freedom demanded in strident terms as necessary to liberate women from some form of “oppression” – though crucially, the new freedom is also enticing to men, especially young men with strong libidos and few responsibilities. This then degenerates into a corollary criminal accusation against (usually) the man who takes the bait by indulging in the newly permitted pleasure:

Recreational sex in the evening turns into accusations of “rape” in the morning, even when it was entirely consensual. (This is especially rampant on college campuses.)

Demands for access to workplaces, universities, the military, and other previously male venues (accompanied with equally strident demands to engage there in female-only activities, such as pregnancy and breastfeeding) invite accusations of sexual “harassment” against the men when relations inevitably develop (and often turn sour), regardless of who initiates them.

Cohabitation and “no-fault” divorce are demanded to liberate women from “patriarchal” marriage but quickly generate accusations of male abandonment (even when the woman ends the marriage), as well as domestic “violence” and “child abuse,” in order to procure custody of children and the financial awards they bring.

The proclaimed right to raise children outside wedlock and without fathers to protect and discipline them soon turns into demands to prosecute adolescents and even children for “bullying” one another and eventually for more serious matters.

Defiant declarations that women do not need men for financial support quickly give way to demands to arrest and incarcerate without trial men who do not provide women with adequate income in the form of alimony or child support.

Assertions that women do not need men for protection soon produce hysterical outcries for intrusive police powers, innovative punishments, and expanded penal institutions to punish ever-proliferating and loosely-defined forms of “violence against women,” even when no physical contact or threat of it is involved. (Homosexuals are now mimicking this strategy.)

The demanded right to engage in homosexual acts and public sexual displays translates almost automatically into the power to arrest or otherwise stop the mouths of preachers, “bullies,” and anyone else who objects or ridicules or offends the “feelings” or “pride” of homosexuals.

My favorite, given our setting in higher education:) Demands for unisex bathing facilities in university residences lead to… – well, any young man lacking the intelligence to detect the trap awaiting him there may not belong in a university in the first place.

And more.

Radical ideology has thus transformed our government into a matriarchal leviathan that operates like a massive, bureaucratic version of…Potiphar’s wife. We have not eliminated a “gender stereotype,” as we were promised; we have merely politicized it – in this case that of the temptress, the seductress who lures men into a “honeytrap” by offers of pleasure before springing a trap that today can mean decades in prison.

Elsewhere in the lecture, Baskerville rails against gay rights and no-fault divorce, concluding that marriage equality “can end nowhere but in prison and in death.”

Past redefinitions of marriage effected by unilateral and involuntary divorce laws have already resulted in the most repressive government machinery ever created in the United States. In the name of divorce, legally unimpeachable citizens are now summarily evicted from their homes, forcible separated from their children, expropriated of all they possess, and incarcerated without trial – while the world mouths excuses and averts its eyes. The divorce apparat is the government’s purpose-built mechanism for dismembering families and criminalizing the embodiments of the hated “patriarchy”: fathers.

The continuing redefinition of marriage now being proposed by homosexuals is another new freedom that can end nowhere but in prison and in death.